


while seeking revenge, dig two graves

by fructose



Series: a thread from one's own innards [2]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Blow Jobs, Gang AU, Gore, Kinda, M/M, Serial Killers, Violence, Weaponry, gross stuff, self-indulgence, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 01:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6545695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fructose/pseuds/fructose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Tyler confessed to help his heart, and Josh soaked up Tyler’s desperate words to help his own; one aortic chamber beating into the other and back again, a cycle of blood lust and reverence that kept them alive. They were counterweights, neither stronger than the other, and they were balanced so long as they were pressed together. If one crumbled then they would both be lost to the wind."</p>
            </blockquote>





	while seeking revenge, dig two graves

Tyler spent a lot of time confessing, whispered pleas on his knees with his hands clasped together in front of him. Sometimes he would confess to Josh, tell him all the things he was ashamed of; the things he had done, the things he wanted to do, the things that kept him up at night and the things that helped him sleep.

Josh’s heart beat fast during Tyler’s confessions, his cock hard between his legs. Josh would reach out and cup his hand under Tyler’s jaw, tipping his head up so that he could see that Josh was smiling and say, “I wanna know, tell me everything.”

Tyler would talk even as Josh pulled him to his feet and pulled him to the bed, Josh’s calloused hands under his clothes, his pleas for forgiveness becoming please for solicitude, _Please, Josh, please._

Tyler confessed to help his heart, and Josh soaked up Tyler’s desperate words to help his own; one aortic chamber beating into the other and back again, a cycle of blood lust and reverence that kept them alive. They were counterweights, neither stronger than the other, and they were balanced so long as they were pressed together. If one crumbled then they would both be lost to the wind.

 

On New Year’s Day one of their dealers was found dead in Dayton, mutilated and pulled apart, bearing all the markings of a killing they might have carried out themselves.

“It’s a message, obviously,” Tyler said, looking down at the photographs of the murder scene, spread out across the white table in the living room. “It looks like one of ours.”

“He _is_ one of ours,” Josh said with a sigh.

“No, the killing,” Tyler said. “It looks like we did it.”

Josh nodded. He watched Tyler press gentle fingers to the pictures of the dead body in front of him and knew that Tyler would go to Dayton with or without him. The message was meant to scare them, to rattle them somehow, but Josh knew that Tyler had taken it as an invitation, a summons for a butcher to the abattoir.

 

In Dayton they found a gang of white males, sick around the edges and itching to get their teeth into something larger than themselves. They had practically been frothing at the mouth when they realised that _those boys, those boys from Columbus, they’re here_.

Josh and Tyler had received a tip from the sister of one of their own guys, a woman who lived in the suburbs outside Dayton. She hadn’t wanted to get involved, but the man the gang had killed had been a friend of her brother’s and she was grey and aching with sadness.

“They meet in a bar up in Northridge, on Hillsdale Avenue,” she had said before adding, “Now get the hell out of my house. Don’t bring this shit round here anymore.”

Tyler had nodded and apologised, and they both thanked her before they left.

They strolled into the bar that night holding their weapons at their sides and walked straight through to the back, passed a handful of confused locals. The barman spluttered a warning but Tyler held up his hand and flicked open a butterfly knife without a word, silencing him in a motion. As they stepped into the backroom Josh heard the scraping of chairs behind them, the noises of a hasty getaway out in the bar.

“Five minutes, Ty,” he muttered, overcautious.

Tyler grinned.

Six men sat around a table in the back room, pizza boxes and beers in a mess between them. Josh raised his shotgun to his eye line as the men turned to stare at them, stepping forward and letting off a round into the face of the nearest man. His head snapped backwards and his brain matter hit the face of the man sat behind him, who sat stunned for moment, his mouth open, then there was a flurry of movement, a cacophony of furious voices as the men leapt to their feet. Out of the corner of his eye Josh saw Tyler pull up the back of his shirt, drawing the thick blade of a machete from the waistband of his jeans and launching himself at the two men nearest to him.

Blood and bone sprayed the walls as Josh took out another of the gang members, his face a smoking hole. He let his eyes flick to Tyler again, catching the moment when he slammed the blade of the machete into the neck of the man he was fighting. The man fell to the floor and Tyler landed on top of him, pulling the blade out of his neck and hacking at him again, cutting almost half way through the front of his throat.

Josh let off another shot, hitting a third man in the chest, who fell backwards into the spattered mass of his own innards. He heard a shout and turned as another of the men lunged forward, a knife in his hand. He sunk the blade deep into Josh’s shoulder, looking triumphant, but Josh just bared his teeth and raised his gun. His adrenaline masked the pain and the pump of his own blood across his chest only made Josh more furious. His finger twitched against the trigger of the shotgun as Tyler appeared, wrapping a bloodied hand around the man’s mouth and yanking his head backwards as his butterfly knife cut across his throat. Tyler let the man fall to the floor, who slumped to his knees and toppled to the side like a felled tree.

Tyler’s breath was ragged as he tipped his face towards Josh’s, grinning wide.  Blood was dripping from him, down his arms and across his face like red constellations. “Josh,” he said, reaching out and pressing their foreheads together for one brief moment.

Josh put a hand on the back of Tyler’s neck, comforting, grounding, and smiled back. “Wanna get out of here?”

Tyler nodded.

 

Tyler went to church four days later, back in Columbus, and when he came out Josh blew him in the bathroom of the bar next door, undoing all the good Tyler had pleaded for.

Knelt on the dirty tiles Josh thought about the sprawl of the men they had killed, spread about the little room behind the bar on Hillsdale Avenue. He thought about blood across the walls and the sickly squelch of viscera. He thought of Tyler’s machete lodged deep into the gut of some nameless foe, a specimen pinned by Tyler’s malice. He thought about Tyler running his bloodied fingers across the grubby wallpaper of that little room as they left, four sticky red trails leading from the carnage to the door.

Tyler breathed heavy above him and he pushed his hands into the dark curls of Josh’s hair. “You and me,” he said, breathless. “You and me, Josh.”

 _Yeah_ , Josh thought blissfully. _You and me_.

**Author's Note:**

> Repost. Apologies. More gross stuff to come.


End file.
